we just found out the locations of the outreaches
North India- Calcutta and New Delhi
South India
Egypt- Sudan
Eastern Europe- Hungary and Romania
I will let you know ASAP where i'm going.. but if you all would like, i would love if you would pray that i would hear God's Voice clearly on where he wants me to go :)
I'm so excited!!! all these places are amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
God's Love For Us
This is just a little simple blog.. something to think about
Today while we were singing songs worshiping... we were about to sing the next song when the worship leader stoped and said i feel like God wants us to cry out to him and just tell him why we love him... So as he softly played music each of us took turns just saying why we love him...very simple statments, like Holy Father i love you because you are a forgiving God.. we went like that for about 5min.. It was the most beautiful thing every because as i stood there hearing all the reasons why all of us love our God, it just really touched me that i get to serve this amazing person that everyone truly adores! and more than that, as we say all these reasons why we love our heavenly father, he loves us more than we could ever imagine!!!! He could go one for 10 hours saying why he loves each one of us.... I can't believe i get to serve this amazing God
Today while we were singing songs worshiping... we were about to sing the next song when the worship leader stoped and said i feel like God wants us to cry out to him and just tell him why we love him... So as he softly played music each of us took turns just saying why we love him...very simple statments, like Holy Father i love you because you are a forgiving God.. we went like that for about 5min.. It was the most beautiful thing every because as i stood there hearing all the reasons why all of us love our God, it just really touched me that i get to serve this amazing person that everyone truly adores! and more than that, as we say all these reasons why we love our heavenly father, he loves us more than we could ever imagine!!!! He could go one for 10 hours saying why he loves each one of us.... I can't believe i get to serve this amazing God
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Original design
Let me start by saying I wasn’t sure if I was going to share with all of you what God is showing me right now, because I think a lot of people won’t understand, but I’m not here to tell you what you want to hear… so I pray that you read this post with an open heart and not be judgmental..also some stuff is hard to put into words but I will try my best.
First YWAM is not affiliated with any denomination.. they simple believe in following Jesus. One thing that we are learning to do is hear from God directly, which is a lot harder than you would think especially if you have ADD and you always have these random thoughts in your head and you are like ok… Is that you God or is that just me thinking?? Before I came here I learned that when you pray you can’t just say words but you have to have 100% faith that what you were praying would come true and God would intern be faithful. (Hopefully you get what I’m saying… I’m not saying oh I will pray for one million dollars and my wish will come true!) Being here is so crazy because we will all be in a room wit a 80 people and we will ask God to show us, for example how to witness to people on the slopes. We will all be praying and with in minutes people will say “God showed me this!” And “God told me to do this!” So remind you I have never been around anything like this before because I mean in a Baptist church you don’t see people just stand and say “God gave me a vision!” I had many negative thoughts about this… I said stuff like.. those people are just making up some crazy pictures, God didn’t really give them a vision…. And…. God didn’t just speak to you that was just your imagination.
My thought got even more negative when a group of two couples came from a church in the states that has a special focus on listening to God’s voice and also hearing from God what your original design is. What the heck is an Original design?? Well I learned that it is the desired will (plan) that God has for our lives. They get this ides of original design from the bible in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” There are also many other verses and they just believe that in this world today we get really distracted and set apart from what God really had planned for our lives.
So they did 3 days on teaching about original design which was really good and made a ton of sense and then they said that we could each get prayed for individually where they would ask God what our original design was. I didn’t sign up at first because I didn’t know how I felt about it and everyone that had got prayed for was saying things like, “Oh my goodness that was so crazy everything they said was so true!” While I was trying to decide if I should get prayed for God proved to me that he can speak through other people! (Long story and probably wouldn’t make sense through text) So I decided to get prayed over to figure out what my original design was.
I didn’t really show my personality around these people because for example I didn’t want them to know that I was shy and then them pray and be like..God is showing me that you need to stop being so shy! So see I was very skeptical about this whole deal. The people who were praying for myself was Laura and Andrew, and I like how they started because they said, “ This is a time where we ask God to show us the plan that he had for your life before the world started to get involve and corrupt the plans, but please do not take everything we say here to heart because sometimes we misinterpret what God is saying, so we very much encourage you to take all of this back to God yourself and ask he him what he means by all of it.” Ok so they are praying and like I don’t even close my eyes because seriously I couldn’t even think straight.. I was just thinking oh my goodness are these people really hearing the voice of God right now about me?!?! Then after praying and sitting in silence for a minute or two Laura asked me and if I had a desire to do missions, (even though the answer was yes, I still didn’t want to give her any ideas, if this whole thing was true I wanted it come from God and know that is wasn’t just coming from these two people sitting in front of me.) So I said I don’t know. She went on to say that she saw a picture of me reaching out and ministering among an unreached people group. This made me smile because as my mom would tell you, she thinks I should do missions in the USA, but I have told her that in the US there are churches on every corner and I want to go somewhere were people have never even the heard the words Jesus Christ before. Then they thanked God for that image and prayed for more things that he has planned for me life… They then heard that I’m a defender of the defenseless, they saw a picture of me being motivated by some injustice and me being angry about it. This is true too because as most people know, I have a passion to help people with Aids, and this passion started when in my government class we had a project in which we had to design our own country. One of the groups made a country with rules like you can drink beer when you are 12 yrs old and some other crazy laws and also all the people with aids would live on one remote island so they wouldn’t infect anyone…ya talk about injustice. They were about 8 other key points that would take me about 10 pages to explain to you!
So this was a time just to get my original deign but then Laura and Andrew saw something that was negative and that totally crushed my heart. They saw that the enemy (devil) has had a lot of impact on my life. They said that they saw the enemy making me “mousy” meaning quite like a mouse and also he was making me timid. They went on in more detail saying the Enemy has tried to weaken my confidence to even speak out what God has shown me. If you don’t already know this is true let me take a trip down memory lane… In high school I would go to weekend events/ conferences with my church woodland, like Passion 07 and Dare to Share. I don’t know exactly when it started…but I realized that I hated speaking in front of people about my faith or even about anything.. actually not hated but was terrified to speak out. After these amazing conferences that changed my way of thinking over and over again we would all share what we had learned…everyone had awesome stories about what God had shown them and when it got to me all I would do is cry because I was so scared to share if front of people. It was like I thought what God had shown me wasn’t as important or awesome as he had shown the person sitting next to me. To hear them say that God was showing/telling them this was heart breaking because it just makes me want to be totally done with this stage of my life where I’m scared to speak out about my faith! Knowing that they heard this from God was insane because obviously these people could not just make that up!
They also said God has shown us that he has giving you specific directions and we see you in a group of people and everyone is going in one direction but the Lord is showing you that the group should go in a different direction..The direction that you are going in..the right direction. Then to close they said the Lord is telling us that he is very proud of you and he wants you to press into all he has for you in the DTS. He wants you to take risks and to step out with him… and not play it safe. Holy Cow talk about exciting! The God of wonders beyond our galaxy just told them that he was proud of me and he wants me to take risk with him!! I LONG TO step out and take risks with my God!! Like I said there are still more things they said but it would make this post even longer than it already is. J But we ended and prayed that I would take this all back to God myself and seek what he means by all of it. They asked what I thought about it all and asked if I could relate to any of it and umm I said about 3 words because I was in extreme shock! And I think God was laughing because I had doubt in this whole thing and I could just see him sitting there smiling saying I told you I could do this, as I sat there with my mouth open.
Since finding out my original design I have been talking to a lot God about it and he hasn’t said, “Yes Leslie you are to be a defender of the weak!” But he has placed some things on my heart that I would like to share with you. (This blog is pretty long so you can take a break right about now if you would like, you could get some water or go to the bathroom J or as they would call it here the washroom) One… being here is hard because you want to know everyone on a really deep personal level, so it is like having 30 best friends! Which is really coold. So I ask the questions like what are some of your passions? What is your story about God and his Glory, like why are you here being YWAMER right now? What do you think you are going to do after YWAM or what do you think God has planned for your life? I think you get the point… as people answered these questions I learned that people are so different and have really different passions! One Guy is really interested in the business world and wants to bring God there, another wants to totally change the whole film industry to where films would bring God glory. This one gal has a desire for leaders, like not being a leader herself, but she really enjoys praying for them and encouraging them to keep doing what they are doing. Isn’t it crazy what God has placed on our each of our hearts, like I hate business! And I know nothing about the film industry! But these people have a passion for these subjects. Having said that it has become so clear to me how God has planed my life, or in other words, I understand the reason why I am the way I am. I don’t have a serious boyfriend who I want to get married to, I have never had an intimate relationship with a boy so I don’t know what I’m missing out on and I don’t desire to be in love with a man right now. I don’t have a passion to become anything like a doctor or an accountant which means I don’t have a desire to go to college. You might be saying wow Leslie you are one boring person and you have no idea who you are because you want to do nothing in your life! When in contrast I think I God has planned the most exciting life for me which looks like this…. Following him. He has been preparing myself for my whole life for this moment right now, where I decided that I want nothing unless it involves following and serving God.
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Ephesians 4:1
Paul Hawkens was our teacher this week and he shared with us this verse. He also shared with us that the word calling is more of a relationship word than a vocation. So when people ask me what is your calling or what do you want to do when you get older. My response is I want to walk in an intimate relationship with the Lord. “ I desire to do your will, O my God.” Psalm 40:8. Being here has already stirred up so many things that I want to do. I love Europe and the people from France that are here were telling me that is very hard to be a Christian in France, so how awesome would it be just to travel around France and all of Europe just sharing God’s Love. YWAM has many more schools that just DTS and one of them is a bible school ( I can’t think of the name right now) where you study the bible for 9 months! There is a girl who that attend that school and over dinner that is all we talked about one night. She said you go through the bible 5 times! This first time you just read it all the way through because really it is just one really long story so it helps to read it all the way through to get the whole picture. Then the other 4 times I can’t remember how they exactly do it, but it is just and intense 9 months of study the book of life! INSANE! I would love to do that. So being here has just totally gotten my exited about all the things I can do to serve God. Also it is hard not to get nervous though, like will God show me what he wants me to do after DTS, and am I worthy enough for him to use me, But I try not to have those thoughts and just completely trust in him.
I will close by saying this..our speaker Paul also taught me, when you are in love with someone you hang on to every last word they say, you think about them when you first wake up, you think about them right before you are about to fall in sleep, they make you smile when no one else, and you always notice when they come into and exit the room. Well in Psalm 13:2 it says, “You know when I sit and when I rise.” God is totally and completely in love with each on of us!! But as I asked myself if I acted like I was in love with God the answer was not yes. I have said for so long that God is the lover of my life and have sung that song that goes, Jesus I am so in love with you… but now I’m realizing what it really looks like to be in love with God and I’m not there yet but seriously I know I say the word desire a lot but being in love with God is truly what I desire, desire meaning wish, want, longing, craving, yearning, need, hunger, thirst…. I desire to be in love with God.
So I don’t know what life will be like after DTS or even what my life will look like in general but I know it will be the best life every if I’m fowling God and the will he has planned for my life. I’m not saying it is going to be easy, fun, effortless, or some glamorous adventure, but I do know it will be absolutely amazing and breath taking………………… + Peace
First YWAM is not affiliated with any denomination.. they simple believe in following Jesus. One thing that we are learning to do is hear from God directly, which is a lot harder than you would think especially if you have ADD and you always have these random thoughts in your head and you are like ok… Is that you God or is that just me thinking?? Before I came here I learned that when you pray you can’t just say words but you have to have 100% faith that what you were praying would come true and God would intern be faithful. (Hopefully you get what I’m saying… I’m not saying oh I will pray for one million dollars and my wish will come true!) Being here is so crazy because we will all be in a room wit a 80 people and we will ask God to show us, for example how to witness to people on the slopes. We will all be praying and with in minutes people will say “God showed me this!” And “God told me to do this!” So remind you I have never been around anything like this before because I mean in a Baptist church you don’t see people just stand and say “God gave me a vision!” I had many negative thoughts about this… I said stuff like.. those people are just making up some crazy pictures, God didn’t really give them a vision…. And…. God didn’t just speak to you that was just your imagination.
My thought got even more negative when a group of two couples came from a church in the states that has a special focus on listening to God’s voice and also hearing from God what your original design is. What the heck is an Original design?? Well I learned that it is the desired will (plan) that God has for our lives. They get this ides of original design from the bible in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” There are also many other verses and they just believe that in this world today we get really distracted and set apart from what God really had planned for our lives.
So they did 3 days on teaching about original design which was really good and made a ton of sense and then they said that we could each get prayed for individually where they would ask God what our original design was. I didn’t sign up at first because I didn’t know how I felt about it and everyone that had got prayed for was saying things like, “Oh my goodness that was so crazy everything they said was so true!” While I was trying to decide if I should get prayed for God proved to me that he can speak through other people! (Long story and probably wouldn’t make sense through text) So I decided to get prayed over to figure out what my original design was.
I didn’t really show my personality around these people because for example I didn’t want them to know that I was shy and then them pray and be like..God is showing me that you need to stop being so shy! So see I was very skeptical about this whole deal. The people who were praying for myself was Laura and Andrew, and I like how they started because they said, “ This is a time where we ask God to show us the plan that he had for your life before the world started to get involve and corrupt the plans, but please do not take everything we say here to heart because sometimes we misinterpret what God is saying, so we very much encourage you to take all of this back to God yourself and ask he him what he means by all of it.” Ok so they are praying and like I don’t even close my eyes because seriously I couldn’t even think straight.. I was just thinking oh my goodness are these people really hearing the voice of God right now about me?!?! Then after praying and sitting in silence for a minute or two Laura asked me and if I had a desire to do missions, (even though the answer was yes, I still didn’t want to give her any ideas, if this whole thing was true I wanted it come from God and know that is wasn’t just coming from these two people sitting in front of me.) So I said I don’t know. She went on to say that she saw a picture of me reaching out and ministering among an unreached people group. This made me smile because as my mom would tell you, she thinks I should do missions in the USA, but I have told her that in the US there are churches on every corner and I want to go somewhere were people have never even the heard the words Jesus Christ before. Then they thanked God for that image and prayed for more things that he has planned for me life… They then heard that I’m a defender of the defenseless, they saw a picture of me being motivated by some injustice and me being angry about it. This is true too because as most people know, I have a passion to help people with Aids, and this passion started when in my government class we had a project in which we had to design our own country. One of the groups made a country with rules like you can drink beer when you are 12 yrs old and some other crazy laws and also all the people with aids would live on one remote island so they wouldn’t infect anyone…ya talk about injustice. They were about 8 other key points that would take me about 10 pages to explain to you!
So this was a time just to get my original deign but then Laura and Andrew saw something that was negative and that totally crushed my heart. They saw that the enemy (devil) has had a lot of impact on my life. They said that they saw the enemy making me “mousy” meaning quite like a mouse and also he was making me timid. They went on in more detail saying the Enemy has tried to weaken my confidence to even speak out what God has shown me. If you don’t already know this is true let me take a trip down memory lane… In high school I would go to weekend events/ conferences with my church woodland, like Passion 07 and Dare to Share. I don’t know exactly when it started…but I realized that I hated speaking in front of people about my faith or even about anything.. actually not hated but was terrified to speak out. After these amazing conferences that changed my way of thinking over and over again we would all share what we had learned…everyone had awesome stories about what God had shown them and when it got to me all I would do is cry because I was so scared to share if front of people. It was like I thought what God had shown me wasn’t as important or awesome as he had shown the person sitting next to me. To hear them say that God was showing/telling them this was heart breaking because it just makes me want to be totally done with this stage of my life where I’m scared to speak out about my faith! Knowing that they heard this from God was insane because obviously these people could not just make that up!
They also said God has shown us that he has giving you specific directions and we see you in a group of people and everyone is going in one direction but the Lord is showing you that the group should go in a different direction..The direction that you are going in..the right direction. Then to close they said the Lord is telling us that he is very proud of you and he wants you to press into all he has for you in the DTS. He wants you to take risks and to step out with him… and not play it safe. Holy Cow talk about exciting! The God of wonders beyond our galaxy just told them that he was proud of me and he wants me to take risk with him!! I LONG TO step out and take risks with my God!! Like I said there are still more things they said but it would make this post even longer than it already is. J But we ended and prayed that I would take this all back to God myself and seek what he means by all of it. They asked what I thought about it all and asked if I could relate to any of it and umm I said about 3 words because I was in extreme shock! And I think God was laughing because I had doubt in this whole thing and I could just see him sitting there smiling saying I told you I could do this, as I sat there with my mouth open.
Since finding out my original design I have been talking to a lot God about it and he hasn’t said, “Yes Leslie you are to be a defender of the weak!” But he has placed some things on my heart that I would like to share with you. (This blog is pretty long so you can take a break right about now if you would like, you could get some water or go to the bathroom J or as they would call it here the washroom) One… being here is hard because you want to know everyone on a really deep personal level, so it is like having 30 best friends! Which is really coold. So I ask the questions like what are some of your passions? What is your story about God and his Glory, like why are you here being YWAMER right now? What do you think you are going to do after YWAM or what do you think God has planned for your life? I think you get the point… as people answered these questions I learned that people are so different and have really different passions! One Guy is really interested in the business world and wants to bring God there, another wants to totally change the whole film industry to where films would bring God glory. This one gal has a desire for leaders, like not being a leader herself, but she really enjoys praying for them and encouraging them to keep doing what they are doing. Isn’t it crazy what God has placed on our each of our hearts, like I hate business! And I know nothing about the film industry! But these people have a passion for these subjects. Having said that it has become so clear to me how God has planed my life, or in other words, I understand the reason why I am the way I am. I don’t have a serious boyfriend who I want to get married to, I have never had an intimate relationship with a boy so I don’t know what I’m missing out on and I don’t desire to be in love with a man right now. I don’t have a passion to become anything like a doctor or an accountant which means I don’t have a desire to go to college. You might be saying wow Leslie you are one boring person and you have no idea who you are because you want to do nothing in your life! When in contrast I think I God has planned the most exciting life for me which looks like this…. Following him. He has been preparing myself for my whole life for this moment right now, where I decided that I want nothing unless it involves following and serving God.
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Ephesians 4:1
Paul Hawkens was our teacher this week and he shared with us this verse. He also shared with us that the word calling is more of a relationship word than a vocation. So when people ask me what is your calling or what do you want to do when you get older. My response is I want to walk in an intimate relationship with the Lord. “ I desire to do your will, O my God.” Psalm 40:8. Being here has already stirred up so many things that I want to do. I love Europe and the people from France that are here were telling me that is very hard to be a Christian in France, so how awesome would it be just to travel around France and all of Europe just sharing God’s Love. YWAM has many more schools that just DTS and one of them is a bible school ( I can’t think of the name right now) where you study the bible for 9 months! There is a girl who that attend that school and over dinner that is all we talked about one night. She said you go through the bible 5 times! This first time you just read it all the way through because really it is just one really long story so it helps to read it all the way through to get the whole picture. Then the other 4 times I can’t remember how they exactly do it, but it is just and intense 9 months of study the book of life! INSANE! I would love to do that. So being here has just totally gotten my exited about all the things I can do to serve God. Also it is hard not to get nervous though, like will God show me what he wants me to do after DTS, and am I worthy enough for him to use me, But I try not to have those thoughts and just completely trust in him.
I will close by saying this..our speaker Paul also taught me, when you are in love with someone you hang on to every last word they say, you think about them when you first wake up, you think about them right before you are about to fall in sleep, they make you smile when no one else, and you always notice when they come into and exit the room. Well in Psalm 13:2 it says, “You know when I sit and when I rise.” God is totally and completely in love with each on of us!! But as I asked myself if I acted like I was in love with God the answer was not yes. I have said for so long that God is the lover of my life and have sung that song that goes, Jesus I am so in love with you… but now I’m realizing what it really looks like to be in love with God and I’m not there yet but seriously I know I say the word desire a lot but being in love with God is truly what I desire, desire meaning wish, want, longing, craving, yearning, need, hunger, thirst…. I desire to be in love with God.
So I don’t know what life will be like after DTS or even what my life will look like in general but I know it will be the best life every if I’m fowling God and the will he has planned for my life. I’m not saying it is going to be easy, fun, effortless, or some glamorous adventure, but I do know it will be absolutely amazing and breath taking………………… + Peace
Monday, January 14, 2008
Exciting Weekend
This is the bomb shelter that we selpt in
The Mt. that we go skiing on
I'm so glad i found somone here that has the same love for chocolate as I do! We bought 8 bars at one time :)
This is a picture of part of my room- that we really need to clean!!
Go- eun, Claire, Me, Susha taking a break from skiing
This is a picture is taken from the train that we take up to the Mt where we ski
Mt. we ski on with the scary chair lift in the background
Claire and IBonjour!
This week during class we sang a song in 5 different languages and then later I had someone pray for me in Spanish. Being here and hearing all the different languages has really opened my eyes…. How many people can I tell about Jesus if I can only speak English?!?! So I have a really new desire to study different languages…Also isn’t it just crazy to think that God understand every language! And there is what like a million and one!
This weekend was Insane!! The Mountain that we ski on had this 10th annual 24 hour race to raise money for charity… there were over 100 teams in the race, there were so many people! Anyways so our DTS helped volunteer at it this event Saturday and Sunday. We were all broken up in teams in which we all had different volunteering times. Saturday I skied all day…. Which I can not believe how much I am improving! Because seriously I was about to give up on skiing the first day, I fell.. umm like 100 times! Anyways so then Saturday night was so cool they had a live concert and the ski race ran right in front of the stage, which was so cool because these people go insanely fast and there was all this loud music so it was just a fun combination!! Then it came to go to sleep.. All the volunteers were staying in a bomb shelter which was a very new interesting experience. Then I had to wake up at 3:30am to do my volunteer shift... I have never been so cold! It was really neat though because I got to work at this stand where I served the skiers hot tea and to my surprise a lot of them spoke English J Therefore I got to ask them how the race was going, and if they got to sleep at all, and a lot of people asked me where I was from and such so I got to tell them why I was here! ( ya know that the whole YWAM thing J)
Sunday morning was beautiful, I had to volunteer just until 8am and then I got to see the sunrise over the mountains and it finally started to warm up. After volunteering we skied the whole day which is seriously such and awesome thing that we are able to do while we are here at DTS. Up in those mountains, is seriously the most gorgeous place to seek after Gods heart and just pray and talk to him. Today for example - The runs that we ski on are pretty long so about half way down 2 girls and myself just sat down on the side of the mountain and just prayed for a little bit. The weather was so nice today I just skied in a sweatshirt and snow pants.. and to all those people who said I would be pasty white( my family especially)… you actually get a really nice tan/burn from the sun reflecting of the snow! J It is hard not to miss home… but being here… I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else right now!
Class starts again Monday so I’m so excited to share with you guys all that I learn!
Oh ya and I started to read my first book assignment it is called, “Forever Ruined for the Ordinary” and I’m really excited because the first line is… Have you ever said “If only I could hear God’s Voice I would do whatever he told me to do.”
+Peace
Leslie
P.S look at Lauren’s Blog..Maui looks awesome! http://LaurenMaui.blogspot.com
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thank you
I just wanted to say thank you so much for everyone who has left me comments!! i had no idea you could do that! so i saw that i had comments and i got all excited :) All the comments were really encouraging and i'm glad you guys enjoy reading my blog :) Sorry i will make them into paragraphs so they are easier to read!
+Peace
Leslie
+Peace
Leslie
Picture time!
Picture time!!
Sunrise from my bedroom window!This was taken when we were just taking a walk :)
My Korean friend Young Bum and me...P.S i always give the peace sign and here it means like victory, like "i win" so i need to get out of the habbit of doing it because when i do it to french people they look at me all crazy
Me and all of my bags!
My roomates- Silije from Norway and Debbie from New Zeland... just taking some funny pictures
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
First day on the slopes!
First day of up on the mountains! It was absolute beautiful! I forgot my camera so sorry I don’t have any picture but ( I will bring it next time and upload them onto this) basically it was pretty insane! We drove about 45 minutes on the most gorgeous road ever, it ran along side the mountains the whole way there and there was this lake that was so pretty that separate Switzerland from France so i could see Switzerland, France, and mountains just by looking in one direction! Then it got crazier so we we started to drive up this really huge hill, well I guess it was a mountain to the skiing place, then from there we took a train up the mountain! Once we were up in the mountains, very direction you looked you were surrounded by huge mountains, for example we were on the Swiss alps but right next to them were the France alps and so on. I pictured skiing would be like in Michigan where you ski down the hill and you are at the bottom, like where you car is parked, well this is just amazing because you have to take like a 15 minute bus ride to get out of the mountains. Sorry in know I sound all excited in my posts but seriously I can’t believe that I’m actually here where everyone is so beautiful. Well the skiing did not go so good I haven’t skied in so long and it isn’t really that easy learning on a mountain! I fell a couple times, actually I’m not going to lie a lot of times. We were skiing 9am until 4 pm so when we were done I could barely walk. People were really encouraging though and said that I would get the hang of it again soon. I walked away today with a beautiful picture of how beautiful and amazing God created this world, a couple bruises, and really cool experience. I’m really excited about tomorrow it is the first day of class. J We have a DTS staff that arrived here about a month before the other students and I did and they have been praying for our DTS and for each of us since they came here a month ago. They prayed about a theme for our school and it is Lasting Change…and our theme verse is Jeremiah 18:1-4. So today while we were skiing, on our lunch break Rosy ( our school leader) encouraged us to go some where alone and spend 30 minutes with God asking him what he wants our personal theme to be for the school. While I was praying I kept having that song stuck in my head… In your presence is where I belong, and in your presence all fear is gone… By the way people keep asking me what are my planes after YWAM- and I keep saying I don’t know yet- having said that the truth is that I don’t belong at college I don’t belong in Africa saving people with Aids I don’t belong doing things that are pleasing to me or others, but where I do belong is in his presence! So as I get nervous about what God wants me to do with my life, like where he is going to use me, I learned that I need to have peace and know that in his presence is where I belong. So right now I’m not going to think where I am physically going to be when YWAM is over but I’m going to be in his presence for these next 6 months and as he reveals his plan for me and if I listen to his will then will be in his presence doing what he has told be to do. Why would I want to go to Africa, India, America..ANYWHERE if God isn’t going to be there????? I have giving my whole life to God and have said I want to be your hands and I want to be your feet and I’ll go where you send me… but those are just words and now… I’m so excited to see what that actually looks like and I have faith in the Lord that he will show me exactly just what that looks like. J You know I am surrounded by these HUGE seriously HUGE mountains and to know that this is only one part of the world and to know that God created this WHOLE world in 6 days.. I have come to learn just how BIG my God truly is… and if he could do all of that in 6 days then how could I not have faith that he will show me how I will serve him?!?! And that right there pumps me up J
+peace – Leslie
+peace – Leslie
Sunday, January 6, 2008
I'm Here!!!
Oh my… Well packing for this trip couldn’t have been any harder!!! To say the least packing for six months was very difficult especially when you only have 2 bags and they have to way under 50 pounds. I have a hiking back pack (thanks Dr. Bonda!) That is 47lb and I literal I almost fall over when I put it on and then when it is on I have to learn forward or else I will fall backwards! Seriously anyone would get a good laugh if they saw me trying to carry all these bags by myself! If you don’t already know … I know nobody that I will be living with, or going to school with, I will meet everyone for the first time in Switz. So when I was in the 4 airports that I traveled through, every time I saw someone with a big winter jacket and a huge carry on like me, I secretly wonder if that is my new room mate! ! Which is so funny because I was in New Jersey and North Carolina which is freezing so everyone has a big coat, and who does have a huge carry on??? Actually when I was getting my ticket in New Jersey for my plane to Switzerland, there was this girl standing behind me that said “ oh I’m going to Switzerland too!” So me being all excited and wanting to find a friend before I get there I go, “ Oh my gosh are you going to YWAM Lausanne?!?!?!” she said “uhh no.” hahaha, she probably thought I was speaking a different language when I said YWAM! So then I got on the very long plane ride but it went really fast because they gave us good food and you could watch like any movie you wanted! So then I got to the Switzerland airport to where I pick up my bags and I get one bag out of the 3 bags I came with…. To make a long story short, one of my bags got left behind in New Jersey and will be here tomorrow and I someone took my sleeping bag off of my hiking backpack ( sorry Dr. Bonda I will buy you a new one!) But I’m here and oh my it is so beautiful… I looked at this YWAM website a million times and saw all the pics of the mountains but omg it is so much more beautiful in person it is incredible!! The buildings are so cute and old looking and then the mountains are in the back ground… it is awesome!! It is so awesome all the people that I live with are from all over the world, they are 11 different countries here. Well I just want to tell you all so much but Im trying to keep this kinda shsort. But I love all my roommates and all the people I live with they are all so cool and nice!! There is a girl who is 27 and she has lived in china, New Zeeland, and a ton of other places basically she just teaches elementary school in all these different places because she loves to travel and loves to teach. Everyone is like that here, they have such amazing sotires! Oh P.S. there is a girl from Sarasota! ok well I will try to update soon but I just wanted to let you all know that i made it here safely even though I lost some things, and it is soo beautiful here, and the people are soo awesome!
+Peace
-Leslie
+Peace
-Leslie
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